Thursday, July 17, 2008

The Show

I haven't talked about softball much because we keep getting rained out. But we finally finished the regular season as the top team in the loser's bracket, and we started the playoffs tonight. (Note: Everybody makes the playoffs.)

We were playing a team that may be the worst in the league. But like us, they have a lot of fun and aren't pretentious and don't wear "baseball pants." It's always nice to play a fun team. But we knew we should be whipping their butts. And we did. We actually mercy ruled them, a first for us. Their achilles heel was not hitting enough grounders. The infield was hard--a guaranteed bad hop every time. But they kept hitting looping liners, which we kept catching. Since the cavalry showed up for the playoff game (we've got over 20 players on our roster), we had to rotate, so I only played the field every other inning. But I made every play that came to me at short, every single one a liner or pop up.

At the plate, I seem to have settled into the three hole, as they know they can count on me to whack it to the outfield. As a lefty hitter, though, the danger is that dreaded grounder to first or second. If I were a righty hitter, even if I grounded repeatedly to short or third, I'd probably beat it out most of the time, between me being pretty fast and the fact that a grounder is rarely fielded cleanly. But it is possible to ground out to second or first. It's usually not a problem since I usually swing for the fences and if I don't hit it right, it's gonna go straight up--but I've been working on that. I overcompensated and grounded right to second. But the girl bobbled it. That's all I needed to beat it out. Run scored, and we were tied at one.

Next batter wails one to the outfield. I fly around second and stop at third. When I turn around, I see the ball had gotten past the pitcher on the throw in. It's rolling in no-person's land between the mound and plate, and I bolt for home, sliding in safely, giving us the lead.

They tied it in the second, but then it was all us from there on out. A dude on our team hit a grand slam, putting us more than 12 runs ahead in the fifth, and we just played out the string from there. My other at bats were two classic line singles to right. When you get three at bats in six innings in a lineup with almost 20 people, you know you're team is scoring at will. I think I scored every time I got on. Kim hit a line shot that was caught, but then hit another to the outfield for a base hit. Her hitting is really improving.

A playoff win--after last year's winless season! We go to round two...